On the way back from one of his many buying trips at a New York auction house, Lehigh professor Robert Williamson often would stroll through the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a century-old artifact under his arm, before walking or busing back to his station wagon at the Port Authority.

But as he exited Sotheby's auction house on a rainy fall day in 1975, he decided that maybe just this one time, he'd spring for a cab and skip the Met. The first century 100-pound marble Roman head he just bought for $500 may have had something to do with his decision.

"I'm not sure I could have carried that thing 100 feet. I sure wasn't going to make it [30 or 40 blocks] back to my car," said Williamson, 98, of Bethlehem, as he recalled one of his favorite purchases. "But that head would have been worth it. I liked it as soon as I saw it."

The fruits of Williamson's decades-long accumulation of rare artifacts — some dating back centuries before Christ — went up for auction at Saucon Valley Auction Co. in Bath Saturday. Despite never making more than $45,000 a year as a sociology professor, Williamson amassed a collection that made his Bethlehem home look like a museum.

On the living room walls were rare 19th century Russian icons, in the dining room plates from the Ming Dynasty and strewn about the house were 400-year-old medical journals and vases dating back to 350 B.C.

Auction coordinator Chris Answini sells this kind of stuff for a living, but even he was amazed at what he found when he visited Williamson to review his collection. The 186-piece collection sold for well over $100,000.

"It was like walking in Indiana Jones' house," Answini said. "He had such a passion for history and such a good eye for what he was buying. We don't see a collection like this very often."

Williamson never had to outrun a rolling boulder or scamper across the top of a moving train, but the collection he sold Saturday reveals his philosophy to guzzle from the cup of life.

He was born in Los Angeles and was working as a sociology professor at the College of Los Angeles, when he met his wife, Virginia, while she was an adult student going to night school. He used his sabbatical to take her on a 13-month honeymoon in which they traveled through South America and Africa.

In 1963, he founded Lehigh University's Sociology Department, and soon began his fascination with ancient artifacts. Sometimes he'd pick them up on his trips, the way he gathered some Russian items while traveling the entire 5,772 miles of the Trans-Siberian Railway. But most of them came during his day-trips to New York that usually included a visit to auctions at Sotheby's and Christie's, followed by a jaunt through the Met.

He bought most of it between 1972 and 1997, taking a liking to pieces that had a history and story. Rarely did he spend more than a few hundreds dollars for any piece, but value was never really the point. He bought them not as an investment, but to enjoy them. That's why he displayed them where people could experience them, too.

That Roman head spent two years in his son Eric's dorm room at Lehigh.

His voice strong, but his failing eyesight and age confining him to a wheelchair, Williamson can still take most of his pieces in his hand and recall where he bought them and when.

"It was a strange compulsion, I guess," Williamson said. "Over the decades, I guess you could say I created my own museum."

But in recent years, as Williamson moved from his Market Street home into an apartment and more recently into the Moravian Village nursing home, he simply didn't have the room to store the artifacts where he could experience them.

After 51 years of marriage, his beloved Virginia died last month, so he said it was time to sell the collection he took so much care in building.

"It's a little sad, but I won't live forever," Williamson said. "I still have my memories, and now someone else can enjoy them."

That Roman head that cost Williamson $500 and cab fare? Someone paid $12,000 for the right to enjoy it as their own.